Sunday, September 26, 2010

If cars could inflict on humans the casual and mortal harm that giant bears are capable of, we would certainly not allow them anywhere near our friends and families. If cars, which weigh upwards of a ton and can run breathtakingly fast, could randomly and impulsively swipe at us with huge sharp claws or crush our skulls with a near miss, we would never stroll on sidewalks right next to their paths.

After all, grizzly bears can weigh as much as 1500 pounds, and can strike with the force of a machine gun. So it’s perfectly logical to kill almost all the grizzly bears, and to make sure one stays very far away from the grizzlies that are left.

And it must be perfectly logical to allow cars to kill or maim so many of us every year. After all, we’re U.S. citizens, and the U.S. of A. is the best country in the world, so if this traumatic toll weren’t the best we could do, we’d do better!

If cars were grizzly bears, they would never be so cruel to us as an actual grizzly bear. After all, a grizzly bear will almost certainly kill you with as much deliberation as you might a snail. A grizzly bear would not stop at imprisoning you for several hours a day, stuffing you into a metal box and forcing you to stare straight ahead the whole time and warily steer your way through some kind of non-virtual computer game. A grizzly bear would just finish you off there and then!

So it’s perfectly logical for us to act as though cars are our friends, since they could never be as cruel to us as a grizzly bear. They represent freedom, and freedom is the cornerstone of the American Dream. Cars allow us to move freely, they allow us to travel anywhere they can take us. They empower us to drive away from cities, and away from grizzly bears. And it’s only a little inconvenient that we can’t use them to drive away from our addiction to OPEC oil beside which new Alaskan oil would be a drop in the bucket.

If cars were grizzly bears, we would never let them live in our garages or driveways. After all, grizzly bears are pretty smelly what with all the strange things they eat and living outside all the time. They tend to roar and bellow so you can hardly hear yourself think. And they cost a fortune to feed!

So it’s perfectly logical for us to keep cars around and spend so much time in them. It’s good for us not to have to work so hard, walking around and carrying things all the time like some savage hunter-gatherer. Everybody knows that back then life was hard and people were old by the time they were 50, because they weren’t able to sit around watching TV or their PC all the time. Staring at a screen all day is really better for us than walking around in the woods digging up roots and picking up acorns. Nowadays, we have health clubs where we can go for scientifically designed exercise programs which are much better for you than mucking about in the dirt.

And so it’s also perfectly logical for us to keep huge trucks around and let them drive around everywhere. After all, without those trucks we’d never be able to have enough food in our grocery stores or enough clothes in our discount stores or enough lumber to build all our houses with. Even though these trucks are as big and dangerous as a dozen grizzly bears at least, and smell as bad as a hundred of them, it’s worth having them around because without them we’d have to grow all our own food and make all our own yarn and cloth like people used to have to do in the good old days!

So if trucks were grizzly bears, they would certainly be extinct right now, because if they were as useless as grizzly bears, and we didn’t really need them, we’d certainly outlaw them instantly. Which would be perfectly logical, as I’m sure you’ll agree.